


What's in a Name?

by pidgethepidgeon



Series: Beetlejuice Short Stories [19]
Category: Beetlejuice - Perfect/Brown & King
Genre: F/F, F/M, Lydia and Emily bonding, Lydia's childhood, Lydia's life after the musical, Lydia's middle names, but it's very cute, it's a lil angsty, more about Emily, not going to lie, this fic is just me inserting stuff I want to be canon, this might be a bit sad, very much so making an au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:40:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23183401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pidgethepidgeon/pseuds/pidgethepidgeon
Summary: The story behind Lydia's full names and what they mean to her
Relationships: Charles Deetz/Emily Deetz, Lydia Deetz and Wendy Blackwood, Lydia Deetz/Original Female Character(s), Lydia Deetz/Wendy Blackwood
Series: Beetlejuice Short Stories [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1556005
Comments: 10
Kudos: 34





	What's in a Name?

**Author's Note:**

> Based on headcanons came up with by me and @cowboybugman at three in the morning

Nothing. It has been one week since they brought their newborn baby girl home and they had nothing to call her. They had been fighting about her name the whole pregnancy, neither of them able to agree on a single name. Charles’ suggestions were all too stuffy like it had been picked from a “how to name your daughter so she’s sure to get a husband” book written in 1542. Emily’s, well according to her husband they were all a little too out there for a child growing up in the 21st century. They agreed when the found out she was a girl that they would wait until she was born, hoping that the minute they looked at her face they would know exactly what her names was but instead when she was born they both said different names and they now had a one-week-old that was being referred to exclusively as “Baby Deetz”. 

“Charles she can’t go through her whole life like this.” Emily laughed, rocking the blonde baby gently as her husband shook up a bottle for her, “She’s going to be so pissed off when she finds out we waited like six months to name her.”

“We aren’t going to wait six months! I’m pretty sure that’s illegal anyway. She’d have a name by now if you would just like one of my suggestions.”

“I can say the same thing to you!”

“For the last time, we are NOT naming her Sardonyx.”

“You’re just afraid she’ll grow up and be too powerful with a name like that.”

“No, I’m afraid that kids are going to call her Dix” Charles opened his arms and held the baby, bouncing up and down trying to get her to take the bottle. “Why can’t we name her something a little more...mainstream? I like Sarah.”

“That’s so common! She’ll have to constantly be going, no I’m not Sarah H, I’m Sarah D. No not that Sarah D, Deetz. Sarah Deetz. Take it from an Emily honey, having a basic name does you no favors in life.”

“Okay, how about a compromise.”

“A compromise?”

“Yeah, we both write a list of twenty names. Whatever name we both have written. That’s what we’re going to name her.”

Emily smiled at her husband, planting a soft kiss on both his cheek and their daughter’s forehead, “It’s deal, but what if we don’t have any of the same names?”

“Then we keep going until we do.”

“See you in an hour then. It’s your turn to get her to nap anyway.”

* * *

An hour later they met up at the kitchen table highlighters in hand as they searched through each other’s lists, their infant daughter peacefully sleeping in the bassinet next to the table. After thoroughly scanning each list there was only one name that they had both written. Close to the top of both their papers, and it was perfect.”

“Lydia Deetz.” Charles whispered, looking longingly at the sleeping baby, “That’s it. That’s her name.” 

“It suits her perfectly.” 

The couple held hands across the table, in awe of the whole situation. Not that it hadn’t felt real all along but now that she had a name it struck them both that she a whole person, she wasn’t just baby Deetz anymore, she was Lydia. The moment was something they would both remember for years to come, but it sadly only lasted about two minutes before Charles reminded them how she needed a middle name and the entire process started all over again. Instead of waiting another week to make it official they agreed that they would each get one name that neither person could veto. They figured middle names weren’t all that important anyway, it wasn’t what people would call her so it didn’t matter if she had two of them.

“I literally cannot believe you are going to force the name Tiffany on her.” Emily whined, she held the baby up to her husband’s face, “Look at her face. Look at her! How could you do this to a poor innocent baby?”

“I hate the name as much as you do but my family would kill me if I didn’t sneak it in there somewhere. It was my grandmother’s name and every generation someone has it. They were already mad when I told them you refused to even consider it as a first name.”

“I mean...can you blame me?”

“No I can’t which is why it is buried as a middle name. And you are one to talk, I mean where did you even come up with Calendula?”

“If you aren’t being such a jerk,” she playfully pushed her husband’s shoulder, “I would have told you that it is a sentimental name. Remember when you joined the gardening club and you fell hopelessly in love with me?”

“You mean when I joined the gardening club and you fell hopelessly in love with me?”

“ANYWAY. The first plant that you grew on your own that didn’t die was a Marigold. You gave me one of the flowers after our first date. Calendula is the scientific name for a Marigold.”

Charles blushed, “Okay, that is so sweet. I don’t even know how you remember this stuff.”

“To save in my brain for years to make you all flustered ten years later because you are in awe of how good my memory is.”

“I would agree with you there, but you forgot to grab the car seat when we were leaving the hospital.”

“And?”

“It had our daughter inside of it.”

“I’m sorry, did you spend eight months carrying and sixteen hours giving birth to said child? You could have grabbed the car seat…”

“Fair, fair. Very fair.”

“So I guess that’s settled then, no more is she baby Girl Deetz identified only by the hospital bracelet so she isn’t one of those switched at birth babies.”

“I still am shocked that we ended up with this blonde baby. Like I know my grandfather had red hair but who would have thought the light hair gene would wind up in our daughter.”

“I think her hair is perfect, just like her name. Lydia Tiffany Calendula Deetz.”

* * *

Lydia was three years old and it was early in spring where it was still a little chilly out but it was the perfect weather to go outside and get some gardening done. Emily dressed her in blue overalls and a polka-dot shirt, handed her a trowel and the two of them got to work. They planted all sorts of plants from flowers to herbs to vegetables. Lydia needed her mother’s help for most of it but she very proudly stood next to the yellow marigolds she had planted all on her own. Emily couldn’t help but smile and grab her camera, capturing the memory to preserve forever. 

“You know what that flower is?” she asked the toddler

“Yellow daisy!”

“No, it’s a Marigold. They usually don’t grow in New York City but the world is always nicer with some color don’t you think sweetie?”

“Yep!”

“Did you know you were named after that flower? Calendula, it’s a very important name to me and daddy.” She sat down in the grass, pulling the squirming child into her lap despite the fact she wanted to play more in the dirt, “I think it’s your soul name. It’s different than your first name, that’s who you are but I don’t know Calendula seems like something special.”

Lydia didn’t really have a response, she was too young to understand the importance of what her mother was saying but she knew it was something nice because when Emily finished the conversation she pulled her daughter into a warm hug and whispered, “My little flower.” while stroking her curly blonde hair. 

* * *

She came home from school one day in third grade with tears in her eyes. The kids at school were picking on her because she wasn’t like all the other kids. She had brought her camera and some of the pictures she had taken for one of their school projects to school that day to present to the class and all throughout the rest of the day kids were teasing her about how lame her hobby was, and they called her a creep because she was trying to take pictures during recess. One of the boys had grabbed her camera while she was trying to walk home and threw in on the sidewalk before running away. It wasn’t ruined, thankfully, but it was still broken. She knew money was a little tight and she didn’t even want to tell her parents, but her mother knew something was wrong the second she opened the door. Lydia tried to brush it off as if she just had a bad day at school but when her mom asked where her camera was she started bawling and handed the broken pieces trying to get the story out between hiccuping sobs.

“They can be so mean. I try so hard to just be their friends but they never want to play with me, nobody ever wants to sit with me. I don’t know why they don’t like me. I just want to be normal.”

“Oh, Calendula.” Emily sighed, pulling her daughter into a tight embrace while she cried. She ran her fingers through her hair, “I know it can be hard, but there is nothing wrong with you. You are perfectly amazing just the way you are and it is their loss that they are too stuck in their ways to realize how wonderful you are.”

“They think I’m strange.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being strange. I’m strange, your father is strange. We’re just… a strange and unusual family but it is a family full of love, and you, my little Marigold are so freaking full of love. You are just filled to the top of it, I don’t know how a kid this small can fit so much amazingness inside her.”

“Mom, you’re just saying that because you have to.”

“Says who?”

“I’m your daughter, you have to tell me I’m amazing.”

“Lydia, I swear I will always be honest with you. I will not hesitate to tell you when you aren’t being amazing and but that’s going to be hard. There’s only one time where I won’t think you are amazing. Do you know when that is?”

Lydia rolled her eyes, wiping away the tears from her eyes, “When?”

“When you are not being you. Promise me you’ll never pretend to be someone you aren’t. You never have to smile when you aren’t happy, you never have to hide your tears or hide your anger because that is all you. Emotions don’t make you any less you, your hobbies don’t make you any less you, because you. Lydia Deetz, are a whole complex person that has so much to offer. So who cares what some other kids say, do you like yourself?”

Lydia nodded

“Then you will always be amazing in my humble opinion.”

* * *

Lydia didn’t really tell people her middle names. She disliked Tiffany with a passion and Calendula was something that just made her feel a certain way. She didn’t hide it if people asked her she would tell them her full name but it didn’t come up often so most people didn’t know. Obviously most people just called her Lydia. Her father called her sweetheart, and her mother would normally call her some floral pet names like flower or marigold. They were cute little things that earned eye rolls or blush from the tween and early teenager Lydia, much like how other kids felt about the silly names their parents gave them. 

When Emily first got sick the nicknames became more meaningful to her. Her heart would flutter when she would hear them and towards the end she craved to hear them over and over. In the last week, she wanted to be called nothing else besides Calendula. She wanted to be her mother’s little flower one more time. To be sitting in the garden where she would be told the very same story of why she got her name that her mother told every spring. She would give anything in the world to hear her mother saying her name, any name, just one more time.

The last name Emily called her daughter before she died was Lydia. Though she knew how much her daughter would have probably wanted to have been called Calendula it was important to Emily that her daughter knew that while she loved Calendula, Lydia was the name she and Charles had chosen together. That was who their daughter was. 

It was two months after Emily died before she heard that name again. Her father never called her it, it didn’t feel right because it was inherently tied to Emily. Lydia never really got in trouble much either so he never had a reason to bust out the full name tactic that parents always use. Especially since the death of her mother, she was always in her room, keeping to herself, and by default staying out of trouble. But after getting a phone call from the school that Lydia had been skipping classes to hide in the library and that her grades were slipping dangerously low Charles knew that he couldn’t just let this slide like he was letting so many other things do. This was her future, she can’t ruin her life just because her mother died. If Emily were still there she would know exactly how to handle it but instead, Charles sat awkwardly at the kitchen table with Lydia’s report car folded awkwardly in his hands, waiting for her to come home from school. 

“Lydia, can you please sit down here?” Charles asked when she came through the door.

She must have known what was coming because she didn’t protest, she slide the chair from the table and sat down without saying a word. She kept her eyes trained down on the ground and her father sighed, “I got a call from your school today. They told me that you’ve been skipping your therapy sessions, you haven’t been going to classes, and look I just got your report card in an email from your teachers. Lydia, you have three failing grades. You’re failing history, you’re failing math, you’re failing english. Look you ever have a C in science, I thought you really liked biology and you said that the teacher was really engaging. What is going on?”

“I don’t like that therapist dad! I told you that, I told you that months ago and you never listen to me. I tell you all the time that I can’t even get out of bed in the morning anymore so no, my grades haven’t been stellar. So sorry I haven’t been the perfect daughter you wanted me to be, I am so sorry I am such a disappointment-”

“Lydia that is not what I am saying!” He raised his voice slightly, “This is so unlike you. I know you had trouble with the kids at school in the past but this is serious now, these are your grades you are going to high school next year you can’t start slipping now or you’ll never go to college.”

“Is that all you care about! Having a kid that you can show off to all your business friends? Look how successful I am, my daughter isn’t a complete and utter failure, who cares if she hates herself she has a degree and that’s all the matters isn’t it?”

“You are being ridiculous. You are taking an issue that is now, and blowing it up to something that won’t even be a problem in the future. What we need to talk about is right now, you cannot keep skipping classes!”

“Okay dad, I promise I won’t be such a fuck-up in the future if it makes you happy.”

“Lydia-”

She jumped up from her chair, “No, no I totally get it you want me to slap a fucking smile on my face and pretend that everything is fine when it’s not!”

“Lydia-”

“I will pretend to be someone I’m NOT because that is just the kind of daughter I am. Whatever you want me to do dad, I have to make you proud don’t I?-”

“Lydia Tiffany Calendula Deetz that is ENOUGH!” He shouted.

She went silent, they both did. They stared at each other, unblinking but he could see tears welling up in her eyes but she desperately tried to fight them back. Charles wanted to reach out to her, he wanted to say..something but she quickly turned away and ran up to her room, the door slamming behind her. 

He sat at the table for a long time, processing what he had just done. He didn’t apologize, but he never did it again.

* * *

Things had been rough when they first moved into the new house, a lot of crazy things had happened but after a while, the dust had finally settled and everything was starting to feel normal again. Charles was working on being a better father to Lydia, trying to be more in tune with her emotions and responding appropriately. Her fifteenth birthday was coming up in September and he wanted to give her something special, it was the first birthday without Emily here but he wanted her presence, he knew it would be good for Lydia. 

He agonized for weeks over the perfect gift and finally, he knew exactly what to get her. On her birthday the whole family came together and celebrated. Cake and presents and games, by the end of the night Lydia was exhausted but so full of gratitude. 

It was nearing midnight when Charles said to her, “I know it’s almost not your birthday anymore but there is one more present. I wanted to wait until after all the festivities to give it to you.”

She smiled, taking the box from his hand and shaking it gently, “What is it?”

“Open it and find out.”

Inside the box was a custom made necklace, a black and silver locket engraved with a flower on the front. She didn’t even have to hesitate, she knew it was a marigold. She opened up the locket and inside was a photo of a three-year-old Lydia standing proudly in front of a patch of marigolds she had planted in the family’s garden, on the other side a photo she had never seen before. A photo of her mother holding Lydia when she was a baby, a picnic blanket covered in marigolds beneath them. Tears were forming in her eyes and she threw herself into her father’s arms thanking him profusely and she giddily turned around so he could put it on her. She lifts up her hair that had grown past her neck now and he fastened the clasp, and Lydia positioned the pendant right above her heart. 

* * *

Lydia had never told Beetlejuice her middle names. She knew that they were too powerful of a weapon, everyone in the family had a name based nickname that was used to tease them and Lydia had managed to go months without having one to use against her. She guarded her middle names, not even telling the Maitland’s but what she could have never predicted was Beetlejuice snooping around in her father’s office and finding her birth certificate. He sat on the names for weeks, knowing he couldn’t use them too soon or else they wouldn’t be as powerful. 

Lydia had come home from school one day and was venting to Beetlejuice in the living room how annoying some of the popular girls at school were because all they cared about was makeup and boys and clothes. Beetlejuice was getting tired of the “I’m not like other girls” rant after about fifteen minutes and calmly, and cooly and looked her dead in the eyes and said.

“Okay, Tiffany.”

The neighbors described the following interaction as, “The sound a velociraptor makes when it is being attacked by a T-Rex trying to take the prey it had just killed.”

Lydia screamed at him she was so shocked that he even knew her middle name that she was just blind with rage. He just stood there with a smirk on his face that she wanted to claw off with her bare hands. She screamed at him so much that her voice was starting to grow hoarse, but the time Charles heard the commotion and came downstairs all he could hear with Lydia screeching, “DID YOU REALLY JUST CALL ME FUCKING TIFFANY?”

Charles froze like a deer in headlights and promptly ran off into oblivion until Lydia cooled down. Unfortunately for him she never cooled down, she simply changed targets and followed him into his office and proceeded to harras him for a solid hour about how terrible of a name Tiffany was and how insulted she was he had told Beetlejuice, even though Beetlejuice had discovered it on his own. 

It became a funny thing after a while. Beetlejuice would call her Tiffany when she needed to be taken down a peg, and several other nicknames stemmed from her middle names, each falling on a delicate scale of rage-inducing to endearing nicknames. He never used Calendula though, it was awkward to pronounce and he didn’t exactly know how to use it against her in a teasing way so he often just went for shortened versions like Cal or Callie to annoy her. One day he was testing the waters though, they were in the middle of a stupid argument, it wasn’t even a real one at first, it was one of those fake arguments friends have just to pass the time and without even realizing it he says it.

“Oh, you just think that you’re proposal for weaponizing bees is SO much better than mine don’t you Calendula.”

She didn’t even register it at first, she was still laughing but the laughter quickly faded and was replaced with a gasp. She clutched instinct to the necklace around her neck, the rest of her body paralyzed in shock and a mixture of grief and anger. She could feel her chest tightening and it was becoming hard to breathe. Beetlejuice stood there, confused as to why his friend had withdrawn but before he could even properly react she ran upstairs to her room and he could hear faint sobbing coming from inside. 

He waited a few minutes, wanting to give her some space while he tried to figure out what he had done wrong. She never had a problem with him calling her Cal, or Callie, or hell he even called her Candle that one time just to mess with her. He didn’t understand why this time was so different just because he used to whole name. He knocked on her door softly, and he could hear her catching her breath and trying to compose herself before she called out, “Come in.”

He sauntered in awkwardly, before plopping down on the bed next to an unusually pale

Lydia, her hands shaking while she calmed herself down.

“Kid, what happened? Was it something I said?”

She nodded, “Yeah, it’s not your fault though, I never told you. It’s just that, nobody even really called me Calendula but my mom. It was the name she picked for me, and I don’t hear it often ever since..ever since she died. I didn’t expect you to say it, and I’m not mad I just, I wasn’t prepared it hit me really hard. I’m sorry for freaking out on you.”

Beetlejuice shook his head, “You have nothing to be sorry for, I didn’t know but I’m really sorry I made you feel this way.”

She smiled at the demon and leaned her head on his shoulder while he gave her a reassuring hug from the side.

He didn’t really understand the whole having a good relationship with someone’s mother but he knew how important Emily was to Lydia, and he realized that while she was willing to put up with a lot of his playful teasing Calendula was off-limits. 

* * *

Throughout her life, Lydia was given lots of little reminders of her mother’s presence in her life through her middle name. A marigold corsage for her first school dance, a marigold potted plant sat on an empty seat in the auditorium at her high school graduation, when she married Wendy she had a wildflower bouquet and marigolds braided into her hair. Emily was always there in spirit as long as there were marigolds somewhere. When she moved into her own house the first thing she planted was a flower garden with a specific kind of flower for each family member. 

When she and Wendy first adopted their son Lawrence they would spend hours in the garden just pointing to them and talking about who they represented. Lawrence was three years old when Lydia had given birth to a baby girl. She had blonde hair like Lydia had when she was born, she looked like the personification of the color yellow earning her the full name of Emma Marigold Blackwood-Deetz. 

Beetlejuice was surprisingly good with the kids, and his heart was completely blown away when he met Emma for the first time. He ruffled Lydia’s hair like he had while she was still a kid, looked at her and saw just how grown up she had become. He cradled her newborn daughter gently in his arms while the whole family looked on with so much love and affection. He couldn’t bring his eyes away from the infant when he said to Lydia, “Looks like you’ve got a new little marigold now.”

  
  



End file.
